TV Obsessive
ListenToAMovie.com
Brien: In these “interesting” times, one of the things that’s helping us all get through it is our media—movies, television, podcasts, audiobooks. Whatever is working for you, right?
For me, with all this new time on my hands, I’d been looking forward to digging into my movie library and rewatching a bunch of the “classics.” Especially the ‘80s comedies that I imprinted into my brain with 50 thousands viewings during college, like Buckaroo Banzai, Ferris Bueller, and Real Genius. No pandemic movies for me, thanks.
The problem is though that you want to get stuff done—yard work, dishes, maybe even a little actual work-from-home. So you can’t be glued to a screen. Enter ListenToAMovie.com.
This site is based on a genius idea. It provides the audio-only track for movies so that you can “listen” to them rather than “watch” them. Now sure, you wouldn’t want to use this site for a new movie that you’ve never seen before. But for movies you’ve seen a bunch of times, or maybe just want to refresh yourself on from having watched it once and remembering you liked it, this is the bomb.
And it’s not just movies. The content comes organized in folders and sub-folders, weirdly similar to Windows Explorer. At the top level, there are “Movies,” “TV,” “Radio,” and “Stand Up Comedy.” There’s also a “Just Added” category that looks to cover the last two months’ worth of uploads. Sadly, there is no search function.
Movies are the showcase here, of course, and there are a ton of them. The selections span all genres and go back nearly a century. The earliest I’ve spotted is the 1931 Dracula. They are organized in single-letter folders (i.e. all the movie titles beginning with “M” are in the “M” folder). Not the greatest for browsing, but great if you know exactly what you’re hoping to find. Unfortunately, articles (“a,” “an,” “the”) are not excluded. So if you’re looking for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” you’ll find it under “A,” not “C.”
The real gem of the site for me in the inclusion of 162 (as of the time of this writing) movie commentary tracks. I own a couple hundred DVDs, most of which I am keeping around in physical media mainly because I have every intention of watching the extras and listening to the commentaries someday. Someday. But when I pop the DVD in, I usually want to watch the actual movie and not hear the director and an actor or two yucking it up about what it was like on the set that day. As an audio-only experience though, this is ideal for listening to while my memory plays out the movie in the background.
The site has been around since at least 2007 (the earliest reference I could dig up). On their Facebook page, they claim to have won an MTV award for “Best Frackin’ Movie Related Website” with no year listed, which I can’t find any evidence of, but heck, why not? Through that Facebook page, they take requests and also allow users to contribute content. They’re a little less interactive now a days on that page, but were still adding content to the site as of March and April this year. Here’s a sampling of what was just recently added:
- Wings – The entire series
- Seinfield – Seasons 1, 2 and 3
- 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
- A Boy and His Dog (1975)
- Chinatown (1974)
- Dave Chappelle – Sticks and Stones (2019)
- Footloose (1984)
- Interstellar (2014)
- Heavy Metal (1981)
There’s something for everybody here.
The tagline for ListenToAMovie.com is “For the Cubicle Workers of the World.” When life returns to normal, I can definitely see this replacing my regular go-tos for background music at work. Maybe not every day, but certainly for those days when I’ve got a mind-numbing task that doesn’t require my full attention. Definitely worth checking out.
http://listentoamovie.com/media/index.php
Those are our recommendations this week! What are yours? Let us know in the comments!
